Francesco Patrizi and the Oracles of Zoroaster: The Use of Chaldean Oracles in Nova de universis philosophia
Abstrakt
Apart from being an author of various philosophical and scholarly studies, Patrizi had also edited the half-philosophical, half-religious fragments nowadays known as the Chaldaean Oracles. He built on the work of two earlier Byzantine philosophers and scholars, Psellos and Gemistos Plethon.
While significantly expanding the extent of the Oracles, Patrizi followed Plethon in ascribing these notoriously mysterious utterances to Zoroaster, who was then believed to have been the most ancient sage of all. Moreover, both Patrizi and Plethon drew inspiration from the Oracles when developing their respective philosophical systems.
The aim of the paper is to compare these two thinkers' view of the Chaldean Oracles and to provide a detailed analysis of Patrizi's use of the Oracles in the Nova de universis philosophia. We try to demonstrate that for both Patrizi and Plethon, the most attractive feature of this text is the (middle) Platonic background in which it had actually originated.
Particular attention is paid to the Oracles' influence on Patrizi's own cosmology and to the latent influence of Stoicism.